Still Learning Piano

I am still practicing piano and taking weekly lessons. I am progressing with my playing skill, but I'm not satisfied at the rate of that progress. My goals are still pretty much the same: (1) to able to play melodies from memory as I have heard them and (2) seamlessly read and play music from the printed page. I think the main thing holding me back is that I don't put in enough time practicing, pure and simple. But I'm still plugging along, nevertheless.

One thing that I'm having a little fun with regarding music is the study of keys and chords. The chromatic scale consists of 12 notes, so a decimal system of modeling simply doesn't work. Neither does the traditional, convoluted "A through G" system of notation, with its flats and sharps. To me, it makes more sense to start with a "base 12" system and go from there. And that's not really such a difficult thing to do: we all are pretty comfortable with base 12, seeing that our clocks are based on it! As a matter of fact, to aid me in understand various chords, I am imagining them as combinations of numbers on a clock face, and then remember them by their shapes. Works for me, at least.

For the individual notes, I have assigned each a number:

0/12: C
1: C sharp/ D flat
2: D
3: D sharp/ E flat
4: E
5: F
6: F sharp/ G flat
7: G
8: G sharp/ A flat
9: A
10: A sharp/B flat
11: B

I realize that I still must deal with musical notation in the form that it is written, but it sometimes helps me to understand things better using this alternative system.